On Friday, February 7, 2020, the CEO of Trans Mountain pipeline, Ian Anderson, announced that the costs of building the pipeline expansion have “soared from an initial estimate of $7.4 billion to $12.6 billion.”
That seemingly straight-forward statement is replete with misconceptions.For one thing, the pipeline’s “initial estimate” was not $7.4 billion. In the National Energy Board hearings, Kinder Morgan estimated the cost of building the pipeline expansion at $5.4 billion. So the real leap in costs is from $5.4 to $12.6 billion.
Some of the world’s largest financial institutions have stopped putting their money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world’s most extensive, and also dirtiest, oil reserves.
Names are important. Terms are important. We need to use them more carefully and precisely than ever in this current era of spin, obfuscation, fake news and outright lies that comprise a larger and larger proportion of both our social and mainstream media.
Solidarity Statement from Professors and Scholars in Support of the Wet’suwet’en people
****UPDATE: This solidarity statement was originally sent around and signed in February 2019. But in February 2020 it started circulating again and is gaining many more new signatories in response to the RCMP raid on Wet’suwet’en territory which has happened in the past weeks. Hundreds more academics are signing daily.****
OPINION: In much of northeastern B.C., Indigenous populations can no longer hunt and fish as their ancestors did, because their land and water are too polluted and disturbed by infrastructure.
As physicians, we are deeply distressed to see force being used to disrupt a legitimate protest by the Wet’suwet’en people. They are simply trying to protect the present and future health of their people. We need to be cognizant of the devastating effect that the Coastal GasLink pipeline will have on their way of life.
Using an ever-changing set of rules, RCMP in British Columbia arrested 11 opponents of the Coastal GasLink pipeline Saturday, the third day of raids on Wet’suwet’en Nation territory.
RCMP also continued to obstruct journalists on the remote forest road in northern B.C. where the conflict is playing out, drawing international criticism. A spokesperson for one of the nation’s five clans, Molly Wickham of Gidimt’en, said the police broke a promise not to make more arrests until after a meeting with the nation’s hereditary chiefs.
